SIPWU 6.14.14 Part 1: Microsoft @ E3 2014

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is arguably the biggest week of the year for the entire gaming industry and this year was no exception. Our Communiqué team remains hard at work summarizing everything that was announced, revealed, and confirmed. Because of the sheer volume of content, we’re splitting the update into parts dedicated to each of the press conferences from the major publishers: Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Stay tuned to the blog throughout the weekend to read our recaps of E3.

This part of the update focuses on the Microsoft press conference, which included the announcement of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, gameplay previews of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Sunset Overdrive, Assassin’s Creed Unity, and more.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection

What was rumored for weeks has become a reality. Microsoft and 343 Industries revealed Halo: The Master Chief Collection. This new Halo game will contain all the Master Chief campaigns from Halo 1, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4. Halo 2, celebrating its 10 year anniversary in November, will get the special Anniversary treatment and get updated graphics and the ability to switch back and forth from classic to Anniversary mode. Halo 1 will contain the Halo 1 Anniversary graphics. Halo 3 and 4 will be at the original graphics those games shipped with. This collection will contain multiplayer for all 4 games as well, running on their original game engines and over 100 multiplayer maps (included all the released DLC). The best part of this all: this game will run at 1080p, 60 frames per second on the Xbox One and all from a single disc. Halo: The Master Chief Collection will be available November 11th, 2014, exclusively for the Xbox One. Also, this game will include access to the Halo 5: Guardians beta, which starts on December 27th, 2014. Oh and did I mention the price? You get all this for a great value price of $59.99. Here is the official trailer:

Also, some preorder bonuses have been spotted for this game. Just like Halo 1 Anniversary had skulls for preorder bonuses, Halo: The Master Chief Collection seems to be doing the same thing.

If you preorder from Gamestop, you get the Bandana skull which gives you unlimited ammo and grenades.

If you preorder from Amazon.com, you get the Pinata skull which makes enemies drop a plasma grenade when you melee them.

If you preorder from Best Buy, you get the Grunt Funeral skull.

Inside The Master Chief Collection is the inclusion of Halo: Nightfall, a live-action series produced by Steven Spielberg which follows the story of a new character, Agent Locke, leading into the events of Halo 5: Guardians.

Halo 5: Guardians Beta

And speaking of Halo 5, The Master Chief Collection also includes multiplayer beta access for Halo 5, with the beta going live in December of this year. For the beta, 343 gave us a small teaser as seen below.

And even better, we got to see some remastered Ascension gameplay featuring Spartans vs. Elites. All of the footage can be seen in the full Halo Media Briefing below.

Xbox
The Xbox One has seen constant support since it launched and there’s plenty more to expect. As the console receives more, with it comes the new Achievements app. Sometime this summer, you can track your achievements with much more ease. The new app tracks your achievements in real time and allows you to view your progress in Snap mode. Achievements are sorted by progress and can be manually adjusted by you to give others more importance. And for those troubling achievements, the app allows you to do a simple web search to find a guide.

At E3, Microsoft showed nothing but the games. Revealing a lot of world premieres and more previews, we got to see a lot of the upcoming games, including the most anticipated titles. In there, were a lot of indie games from ID@Xbox. Here’s a montage of some of those indie games.